young gentleman in Great Britain; and to judge by the mental stamina it
affords him in most cases, what a waste of good food it is! The dishes
are so numerous and so quickly changed, that he has no time to decide on
which he likes best. Like an industrious flea, rather than a bee, he
hops from flower to flower in the educational garden, without one
penny-worth of honey to show for it. And then--though I feel how
degrading it is to allude to so vulgar a matter--how high is the price
of admission to the feast in question! Its purveyors do not pretend to
have filled his stomach, but only to have put him in the way of filling
it for himself, whereas, unhappily, Paterfamilias discovers that that is
the very thing that they have not done. His young Hopeful at twenty-one
is almost as unable to run alone as when he first entered the nursery.
To discourse airily upon the beauties of classical education, and on the
social advantages of acquiring 'the tone' at a public school at whatever
cost, is an agreeable exercise of the intelligence; but such arguments
have been taken too seriously, and the result is that our young
gentlemen are incapable of gaining their own living. It is not only that
'all the gates are thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow,' but
even when the candidates are so fortunate as to attain admittance, they
are still a burden upon their fathers for years, from having had no
especial preparation for the work they have to do. Folks who can afford
to spend £250 a year on their sons at Eton or Harrow, and to add another
fifty or two for their support at the universities, do not feel this;
but those who have done it without affording it--_i.e._, by cutting and
contriving, if not by pinching and saving--feel their position very
bitterly. There are hundreds of clever young men who are now living at
home and doing nothing--or work that pays nothing, and even costs
something for doing it--who might be earning very tolerable incomes by
their pen if they only knew how, and had not wasted their young wits on
Greek plays and Latin verses; nor do I find that the attractions of such